Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... laims.html



Oopsy daisy.

It was perfectly open for the "yes" voters to do the same thing, so it's still all fair and democratic, as these things go.

Should have made a facebook page.

Bankers don't rig machines to vote-spam a website. Techies who work at banks do.

Were they donating 0.0000002p per vote?

*narrows eyes*

*runs for mod*

Wait - the RSPB?

Royal Society for the Persecution of Bankers.

100% don't get this tax. From what I can tell the UK would do quite well out of it as we have a large commercial banking sector... not sure all other countries do. So surely it would almost be a case of the west feeding the west... i.e. the rich getting richer?

Aren't they saying that all the money from the tax would go to charities? I think that's why all the backers are charity groups and celebrities.

In that case, we need a campaign suggesting that the money be directed to Beexers instead. I'm sure we'd use the money wisely. Once we'd run out of drugs and hookers, obviously.

The tax would be split between alleviating child poverty in the UK, development aid overseas and green stuff, from what I understood of Bill Nighy's wibblings on Today earlier this week.

What happens when the banking sector just moves itself to an off-shore haven?

War.

The plan is that the tax would apply anyway.

Loved the banking guy's assertion that it would be technologically unfeasible to keep track of the charges for lots of little transactions. Er, I'm pretty sure you manage that with our bank accounts, guys.

Everyone goes "Oh, we didn't think that would actually happen. Never mind, let's focus on one of the other industries for which the UK is a world leader. Oh."

Superman III, dude!

Good luck getting that to work in eg. Indonesia, where you can't even extradite mass-murderers.

Can we rename it "The Pie In The Sky Riding Popular Opinion For Publicity Tax"?

The banks/bankers/FT are always going on about how the whole of the UK financial services industry, and everyone else for that matter, will offshore or go and work in Hong King every single time anything is proposed which might cost a UK business or high-paid employee a bit of money. I note 99% of them are still here.



Don't be daft - if they have any operations in the UK you hoover the money out of that before it gets offshored.

Not in a very legal sense. Most of them are in Liechtenstein, Jersey, et al.

This weeks Private Eye had an interesting little nuggest - for all their claiming to be protected from takeover because they are a Great British Institution, for tax purposes, Cadburys are registered in Dublin.

^{[citation needed]}



The point being, you can only enforce a 'global' tax in the areas where you have the authority, not everywhere.

Have all of your traders fucked off to Switzerland? No.



It won't matter if nothing they are doing is in the UK, though. The UK side of it isn't suggesting that they'll tax a trade in hong kong between a US company and a german one. They're going to tax UK-related trades. They areafter a gobal implementation of this though, so that Hong Kong would tax that trade.

That's what I'm talking about, the global implementation. They'll get 5 countries to agree to it, at which point the banks will shift as much of their trades as humanly possible to those countries that aren't covered. I also guarantee you that Japan would never sign up, which ruins it pretty much right there.

So they'll stop trading in UK listed shares, then? Nonsense.

No, but around 20% have fucked off to New York. That's enough to be significant.

They don't need to stop, they just stop growing the business in those areas.

Uh huh.

Wasn't there a fair few job vacancies freed up around Autumn 2001?

Damn, now you've beaten me with your powers of knowledge and reason.

Not important banking jobs, no. When profits fall, you thin out the support staff, not the ones making you money.

Did they get replaced, by any chance?

Nope.

So your trading floor is going to continue at 20% less headcount? Is that because you don't *need* any more traders, then? Because if so, it doesn't matter that 20% fucked off because you're still at capacity - it just accelerated natural wastage.

It's because running at lower volume and lower headcount is an acceptable tradeoff for the ability to avoid paying extra taxes on those people.

Which part of this is difficult to understand? If you've got a more hostile banking environment in one country over another, it's preferable to move your operations. It's not "Ooh, the sky is falling", it's basic economics, coupled with the fact that bankers and traders typically are not averse to relocation for financial reasons.

The bank isn't paying the 50% tax or bonus tax or whatever that caused those traders to leave, the traders were.



Oooh, handbags!



Well, in theory yes, but then banks haven't shifted wholesale, or even the majority, of their operatinos as a result of any of the various rounds of regulations and taxes which everyone is always up in arms about - same with the CBI's constant doom-mongering about stuff like how the minimum wage would make everything leave the country.

Problem is, wholesale relocation is actually quite expensive. It would take a fairly massive, non-avoidable, non-mitigate-able (?) hit on the banks' pockets (not its high paid employees') to make it move out of the jurisdiction.


Other than the ones with families, of course.

Don't be daft. Bankers procreate asexually like amoeba while chinlessly guffawing and reading a newspaper, eating a croissant and drinking a glass of transparent wine.

Wrong, and that's why the bank cares.



I can utterly guarantee you that it's cheaper than paying 50% of their bonuses in tax.



That's why I said typically. Lower rate of family and kids than the average, higher interest in travel than the average.

Agree. Fantastic misconception about the bonus tax is that the bankers pay it. They don't, and it is a legal liability of the bank. However the public think it is paid by the bankers (largely due to it being called bankers payroll tax) and the Government are quite happy about this. This foxed even one of the top (probably one of the 2) income tax practitioners in the country the day after the details came out.

I still think 'we' should call their bluff. If (and that may be a big if) it reduces the gap between the richest and poorest, the social benefits of that are worth much more than an unequal struggle to try and keep a small country as a 'world leader' in anything.

Oh come on - in effect it's paid by the bankers, as the banks will reduce their bonus payment by the amount the bank has to pay in tax. The bank is not losing out at all. And in any event it was just for this year!

Seems to me that if you tell your staff "achieve target X and you will receive Y in bonus", and then the government decides it wants to tax that transaction, you'd better make sure they end up with Y in their pockets after tax or you'd be in breach of contract. Surely? In which case, the tax is indeed an employer's liability.

That would be the case, but the tax only applies to non-guaranteed bonuses, so doesn't affect any pre-arranged contractual bonuses.

Mr K is right in intention terms. Kind of. However, the first thing that happened is that one bank told employees that they would pay as if the tax didn't exist so their employees wouldn't be disadvantaged (May have been Goldmans). In a (still) competitive market for the best people, all the others had to follow suit - so it is the banks who end up paying it.

Not in effect at all. "The bankers paid the tax" is as wrong as it's possible to be - as Riles said though, it's the common perception, and that's great because it plays nicely into The Great Villification.

I'm still not sure how you can impose a one-off industry-specific tax on a bank based in another country who never received a penny of government cash, mind.

Don't get me wrong, I think the bonus tax wasn't really a bad idea, it was just really poorly implemented. All it ended up doing was forcing the banks into handing over money that (if they weren't paying the tax), they'd be handing over anyway to repay the bailout loans.

So they've only got themselves to blame - they could have all stiffed their employees, keeping a level playing field.

@Riles - Yes, that was Goldmans. And yes, everyone else followed suit.

Well, as Craster confirmed, they only had Goldmans to blame.

Incidentally, last time I checked, the tax still doesnt work at all, as it is catching loads of people who are not banks/bankers, as they can't catch everyone using the standard definition of 'Bank' so have this whole convoluted definition. Again, it may well be to ensure that Goldmans is caught that they have done this (they have an odd structure apparently). Pesky jews.

Well quite - a trader isn't a banker, of course.

Also, at least some firms have said, effectively, "We're getting our bonus pool taxed massively... the bankers/traders still get their massive bonuses... sorry support staff, you're screwed!"